by Melanie Rawn
In the stifling crush of people, and under the blaze of a million candles, it was terribly hot in his stuffed and petticoated velvet. The windows Rafe demolished had not yet been replaced, but if a breeze strayed down to cool the crowd, he didn’t feel it. Despite the discomforts of his disguise—hauling around half a mile of material that weighed half a ton was no thrill—Mieka was rather enjoying himself. A woman didn’t have to be pretty to be bowed to or smiled at; all she had to do was wear a lot of glittery jewelry. This meant she was rich, and wealth always attracted notice. Besides, nobody could tell whether the lady in the high-necked dark blue gown with the long sleeves—and all those “diamonds” looping down to her waist and dripping from her wrists—was pretty or not. He’d debated about sneaking some of the leftover magic from a withie to rework his face, but not only would it require constant concentration, he’d also have to find a place to hide eight or ten inches of glass. So, knowing his eyes would give him away to anyone who knew him, no matter how much makeup was applied to alter the rest of his face, Mieka had donned a lacy black veil, draping it over his head to hide not just his face but his ears as well—and the fact that he’d flatly refused to have his hair crimped and curled. He wasn’t the only one who’d chosen a method of concealment other than a mask; several ladies wore veils of varying thicknesses, and a few gentlemen had tied colorful kerchiefs over the lower halves of their faces so that only their eyes showed.
Cade had, of course, picked a full face-mask, forehead to chin, made of stiffened black silk and tied with silver ribbons behind his head. Some of the masks were painted, sequined, decorated with lace or beads, but Cade’s was very plain and entirely mysterious, shadowing his gray eyes and concealing the long, curling mouth. Especially did it conceal his nose. Observing from a distance, Mieka had the distinct feeling that Cade was having a wonderful time hiding. He shook his head. All that nonsense about his looks again. And after their talk about concealing one’s true self, too. Mieka toyed with the idea of using one of Cade’s own withies sometime to becast him with a face as beautiful as an Angel’s. What would he think, how would he react, when girls stared and stammered and simpered the way they did around Jeska? Was that what he truly wanted? As much as Cayden wanted to believe that his nose was the only thing people saw when they looked at him, having a face like Jeska’s could be even more … distancing, that was the word.
Though distance was precisely what there wasn’t between Cade and a tall, dark-haired lady in a shockingly narrow-skirted peach silk gown. Mieka grimaced beneath his concealing veil; the only reason Quill was laughing and chatting with her so spiritedly was that his face was hidden. If she’d been able to see him, the conversation would never even have started.
Mieka decided he’d go have a listen, and concentrated on walking as naturally as he could in three-inch heels. There seemed to be a trick to the hips that ladies managed and men couldn’t. The chambermaids had tried to teach him. Battling his sense of balance had at first produced a most unattractive—and inauthentic—mincing sort of walk. He called on memories of Jeska playing various women onstage, and how he’d moved, but Jeska was never actually wearing high heels, was he? He’d thought he had it mostly mastered by the time he entered the great hall, but then someone handed him a drink. For reasons that completely escaped him, the addition of a glass of cold white wine full of languid bubbles put him off-kilter again. Perhaps it was the action of lifting the veil a bit and raising the glass to his lips while still putting one foot in front of the other, but the warning was clear: He would not be getting drunk tonight.
Cade didn’t seem much interested in liquor. He was giving his entire attention to the dark-haired lady. Mieka sidled closer, careful to keep behind Cade in the crowd, and nearly yelped his delight as he spied a chair not two feet from the pair. Just as he was about to claim it, a stout gentleman in a bright red mask sprouting fluffy white feathers sank down with a loud sigh. He looked like a prize rooster. Mieka snapped his gloved fingers, waved him imperiously out of the seat, rings and armbands glittering, and grinned to himself as the man lumbered to his feet and effaced himself. Mieka sat gratefully down—the shoes were murder on his feet, and giving him a backache—to listen.
“It says a great number of excellent things about Prince Ashgar, so kind he’s being to my lady.”
“Is he?”
“Oh yes.” Her speech was fluent, with only a trace of an accent, a slight slurring every so often; quite charming. “When her grandmother came from—I never recall the name of the place, but somewhere to the east edge of the map—she arrived in the dead of night, in secret, and was taken to the Court mediciners. Or do I mean physickers?”
“Physickers. And what in the world for?”
“They stripped her naked. Looking for flaws that might hinder childbearing, or so they said.”
“I strongly suspect they were nothing more than nasty old men. What if they’d found something wrong with her? A freckle they didn’t like the looks of, or a twisted toe?”
“Back to her own country with her, of course! We’ve advanced from such barbarianness, but not by much. Your Prince could have demanded the same.”
“Good Lord and Lady! What happened next?”
“All her own clothes were taken out and burned, poor girl, as if she’d brought lice with her or something horridible. The next morning she came downstairs—”
“Not still naked, I hope.”
“Dressed in our local peasant costume. Very pretty, but humiliating for her, in plain linen all a-lacking lace or a jewel, and with the whole Court in their finest. Then her new husband, though of course he wasn’t being her husband yet, bowed so low to scrape the carpet with his head, and draped her in jewels.” She shrugged pretty shoulders. “His way of apology for what she’d been through beforenight.”
“I wonder how she felt,” mused Cayden, “wearing a peasant’s dress with a fortune around her neck.”
“Ridiculous, of course! Bracelets, rings, pins, earrings, a belt, and of course a coronet. More pink diamonds than an apple tree has spring flowerings, it’s said. All in gold, which was a great mistake since set right. Her daughter set them new in silver.”
“Then that lady over there, the one in pale green—”
“—wearing the rope of pink diamonds and the white mask. Yes,” she said fondly. “That’s your new Princess.”
Mieka leaned to the side, alarmed when the corset creaked, but couldn’t catch sight of her. A servant approached with a tray of sweets. Mieka waved the girl away. He really had to stop stuffing his face or he wouldn’t be able to get into his own clothes without a corset.
“… only child of her father’s first marriage. Her mother died when she was very young. Now, of course, there are three boys and four more girls.”
“So she’s superfluous.” An instant later Mieka saw his shoulders flinch beneath the pearl-gray jacket, as if he realized what he’d revealed.
The lady realized it, too. “Extra, not needed? You sound as if you are of the same experience.” More lightly, teasing him: “And which heavy lordship inheritance have you escaped, then? Castles, villages, miles of wheat fields, a mansion in Gallantrybanks?”
Blithe as a breeze, Cade replied, “All that, plus two coal mines, a fleet of merchant ships, and a manor house overlooking the sea. Oh, and that’s not to forget a perfectly obscene pile of money sitting safely in a bank. Tragic, but I bear up as best I may.”
Mieka rolled his eyes.
“Ah! So you’re a pauper, with nothing to recommend you but your good looks and charm?”
Her voice had shaded into mockery. Mieka was glad of his concealing veil. The voluminous blue velvet skirt helped, too; he could hide his clenched fists in its folds. But Cade was laughing softly, a note in his voice Mieka had never heard before as he parried, “I’ve always found those to be quite enough.”
The mask was giving him the confidence to flirt as if he were the handsomest man in the room. Mieka felt like kicking h
im in the backside—if he could’ve found his own foot amid the billows and ruffles of the gown.
At that moment the worst happened: a gentleman approached, bowed, and pleaded to be allowed the inestimable favor of the next dance.
* * *
“I couldn’t hardly walk in that damned dress and those heels—how was I s’posed to dance?”
Rafe and Jeska whooped with laughter. Mieka, who had spent the last hour maneuvering himself out of garments it had taken the maids less than half that time to get him into, sprawled on his bed to unroll the silk stockings off his legs and continued the tale.
“At first I didn’t have a clue what he was saying. But it turns out the men have little cards to hand out to ladies they want to dance with, and he kept trying to give me one. He wouldn’t go away! I growled at him, and shook my head, but he kept bowing and begging, it was gruesome! So then Cade turned around to see what the fuss was about, and—would you believe it, he started playing the gallant! ‘You’re annoying this lady,’ says he, ‘She obviously doesn’t want to dance,’ says he, ‘Take yourself off elsewhere, my good man!’ ’Twas all to impress that girl, of course, and the fool didn’t understand a word. I fair choked, I did, and damned near bit my tongue clean through, trying not to laugh—”
“Serves you right,” Jeska told him. “Did he recognize you?”
“With this thing over me face?” He waved the discarded lace like a battle flag. “It was hard enough to see out of it, nobody could’ve seen in! And don’t let on it was me, right? Gods, that remembers me—I have to hide all this before he gets back.” He leaped up and gathered clothing. “Help me find someplace to put it until I can return it to the girls.”
They stashed various garments behind draperies and under beds while Mieka went on with his tale.
“So I’m trapped, with Cade fussing and the girl looking at me sidewise, because I didn’t dare open me mouth to say a word. He snatches a glass of that bubbly stuff and hands it to me—oh, I had a time of it, getting it up under the veil to drink! One of the bracelets got stuck on the way back out and I couldn’t get it loose, so it was all nearly up right there and then, only at that exact instant the silly man comes back with a couple of his friends! Don’t wrinkle up that gown so much, Rafe, the girls will murder me. Anyway, I’m trying to unsnag meself before the veil comes off—without dropping the glass—and there’s Cade still being all concerned and courteous, and the girl still staring at me, and that pillock still asking me to dance!”
Rafe was trying to fold petticoats into manageable size to fit into a drawer. “And so you did what?”
“I fainted. Well, pretended to faint. Like you do in ‘Troll and Trull,’ Jeska, and it’s harder than you make it look! Down went the glass in shatters onto the floor. Down I went, a bit to the side, across another chair. Down Cayden went, onto one knee, grabbing me hand—thank all the Gods for those gloves!—while the girl’s waving everyone off so I can get some air.” He paused, holding up the corset. “There’s iron bars in this thing, I swear—look, right along here—and when I went over to one side I got stabbed! Gods, like knives in the ribs! I jerked back upright again, lost me balance, and got Cade right in the stomach with a knee. So he falls over, and while the girl’s helping him, I escaped.”
“With your devoted admirers galloping after?” Rafe straightened up from tucking the last of the blue velvet under his bed.
“Took me another five minutes to lose them in the crowd. Twisted an ankle while I was at it, too.”
“But you got out before the midnight unmasking.”
He shivered. “Only just in time.”
Jeska, on his way past with the high-heeled shoes, pinched Mieka’s chin. Mieka slapped his hand away. “I wager you were quite as pretty as half the ladies there. You should’ve stayed.”
“Ah, but then we’d have to rescue him from the devoted attentions of his many admirers,” Rafe drawled. “But I’m wondering why Cade didn’t sense the magic on these glass trinkets.”
Mieka shrugged and handed over a kerchief so Rafe could knot up the jewelry. “Didn’t use much, really. And he was so caught up in the girl, he wouldn’t have noticed if I’d used enough to turn meself into Queen Roshien with all her moonstones.”
“Why’d you do it, anyway?” Jeska asked. “Why not just go as yourself, with a mask, like everyone else?”
“Why does he ever do anything?” Rafe countered, then shook a stern finger in Mieka’s direction. “I won’t mind Uncle Mieka stopping round to play, but you teach my son your style of pranking and I’ll start my own collection of teeth—and all of them will be yours.”
“Empty threats,” Mieka scoffed. “And how d’you know it’s to be a son? He’d only take after you in looks, and what a shame and a shuddering that would be! I’m hoping for a little girl who looks just like Crisiant.”
Jeska sniggered. “So you can teach her how to dress? Lovely talking to you all, but I’ve an appointment.” He paused to preen in front of the looking glass. “And she’s much prettier than you, Mieka.”
He pretended to consider. “But are you sure she’s a girl?”
Jeska threw the shoes at him.
Chapter 16
It had been Cayden’s firm intent to vanish before the midnight unmasking. He’d had much too good a time with his new friend to ruin it. He’d never met a woman like her, and he couldn’t quite believe she was talking with him.
She danced lightly and gracefully. Her laughter could be softly teasing or low and throaty. Her conversation was quick, intelligent, discerning. The quirk of her smile beneath the delicate golden mask was appealingly wry, and her eyes were a lovely dark brown. He’d been startled when she approached him and asked in his own language how he was enjoying Gref Jyziero, then assured himself that although the cut of his jacket instantly identified him as being part of the foreign delegation, she could have no idea of his precise identity. A mask was truly a wondrous thing.
She hadn’t told him her name, of course, but when he complimented her command of his language, she admitted to being the Princess’s maid of honor. She was deeply fond of Miriuzca, looking on her as a little sister more than as someone who would one day be Queen of Albeyn. A little over a year ago she had been chosen to supplement the lessons of Miriuzca’s tutors by attending classes with her; the two of them spoke nothing but Albeyni to each other in private and read aloud whatever books they could find.
“And your Master Blackpath has been singing to us, teaching such wonderful songs!”
“I’ll bet he has. Just don’t learn any from Master Bowbender or Master Windthistle—my masquer and glisker,” he added.
“Oh, the beautiful ones? Why? They seem charming.”
“They’d teach you songs with words your tutors can’t possibly have mentioned in your presence—”
“Syllable by syllable, with no explanation!”
“Exactly!” He laughed. “You’d scandalize all Gallantrybanks.”
“But it’s likely we’ll need words like that. Please to teach me some? After all,” she reasoned, “if a thing isn’t existing, there’s no need to make a word for it, is there? So in logic we’re like to encounter some of these things, and need their words.” All at once she grinned. “And so lovely to scandalize someone!”
He pretended to be stern. “I refuse to contribute to the warping of your vocabulary!”
Thus he danced, and talked, and flirted, and enjoyed himself splendidly—at least, before he made a complete fool of himself trying to come to the rescue of the heavily veiled woman in the blue gown. Once he was on his feet again, more concerned with whether his mask had stayed in place than with the ache in his stomach from the silly woman’s knee, his companion consoled him with a glass of bubbling white wine and a bracing laugh.
“Absurd creature, she was! And gone, praise to the Angels that watch over us. Don’t concern yourself with apologizings, whoever she was. It’s an advantage of masks that one can safely affront without conse
quences.” She gestured at her own gown. “It’s also why I can wear this tonight without scandalizing.”
“But it’s beautiful,” he protested, and instantly blushed. Yes, a mask was truly a wondrous thing.
“Beholden to you,” she said, dipping a brief curtsey. “A fashion begun several years ago by a woman who was wishing implication of wealth without actual possession.” To his look of incomprehension, she replied with a grin half-hidden by her mask. “What do most highborn ladies do all day? Nothing. They can wear layers of petticoats and frills and flounces—and a corset!—because they don’t have to be moving.”
“Because they can’t move,” he said, fascinated by this insight into women’s garments. “The same with the style you wear.”
“Yes. Fitted so close, I can manage a stately dance, but not a gallop-romp from one side of the room to the other.” She leaned up closer and whispered, “It takes much less silk to hobble a woman than it does to be weighing her down with billows.”
It also gave a man a much better idea of her figure. He didn’t mention it. “If a lady doesn’t have to move, it means she doesn’t have to work.”
“Just sit about and look elegantly,” she agreed. “I’m sure you’ve seen women work in fields, or cottager wives tend homes and children. Full skirts, but nothing much beneath, and certainly not corseting!”
“I can’t believe that you’d need one,” he blurted. Oh Gods—and he was supposed to be good with words, was he? He blundered on, “Actually, I–I know a girl who wears trousers.”
“I’d like very much to meet a lady daring enough to wear men’s clothings!”
“She’s not a lady—well, not exactly—I mean, she’s so much nicer than most of the real ladies I’ve met, the ones with ‘Lady’ in front of their names—” A title that, as an intimate of the Tregrefina, she doubtless possessed. He cursed himself and hurried on, “Which isn’t to say that everybody isn’t nice in Gallantrybanks, and the ladies especially—” Worse and worse. Now she’d think he was a constant flirt. “But she’s fun, and very smart, and she works very hard—not like a real lady, who doesn’t have to work at all, but she’s ladylike, and everything—” Miserably, he remembered the first rule of holes: Stop digging.